


All travel is displacement; or maybe roleplaying.

by karanguni



Series: Nasdack [16]
Category: FFVII, FFXII
Genre: Multi, Stockmarket AU, real world AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-18
Updated: 2010-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rufus in London, bringing his boy Balthier to heel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All travel is displacement; or maybe roleplaying.

The first thing that strikes is continental calmness. It's everywhere and in the theory of the city's aesthetic: there is a plan, a mood, an atmosphere. It coats everything from the incongruity of the buildings, old and new, to the incongruity of the people, blond or brunette or shocking-pink. The city's jigsaw is an elaborate and inescapable one; there's nothing here for rebellion, and nothing here for outliers.

He should not have got on that flight. But at this point there's been so much subsuming and subduction and presumption that it doesn't matter what he should or should not have done; everything with them is a calm, marionette dance. Nothing is too rebellious, nothing too out of place. The aesthetic significance of having got on that fucking plane, of having flown out of his fucking city, and of running here, here -- that's reason enough. That logic enough, and someone at home is sitting at a table calculating the odds, the numbers, the chances.

What are their chances? What were they? Have they changed? What have they derived?

'I'm going crazy,' Rufus says softly against the glass of his cab, the window frosting up and blurring the lights into the darkness of the rainy London night. His contractions feel vulgar; he feels vulgar. He's far from vulgar, though, and he knows it, has known it since the day he was born and somehow, somehow, somehow it feels so much better here. Like regnancy and monarchy are acceptable here - hah! That, too, comes out as a puff warm air, cooling itself dead. Rufus hates how at home he feels here. He hates how his clothes fit better against his skin, he hates how all of his power and all of his money, all of him and the prickly, defensive ferociousness of his youth and his intelligence and his early childhood megalomania fades into an expectancy, an acceptance, a tolerance, a correctness. Here he's absolutely the enfant terrible, and god won't they open the doors for him.

The worst part is the way he city saps his anger from him. The thoughts flick through his mind, but then they leave as quietly as they come, filtering off into the recesses of things that must be accepted. Things are easier here. More complicated. Easier.

Rufus sighs again. The traffic is ostentatiously bad, as though presenting him with a reason for the complaint of his breathing. His phone vibrates against his palm, long and persistently. Rufus slides it against his ear, closes his eyes, and - feeling like another person - says, 'Tseng, yes. Yes, I'm here.'


End file.
